This summer I was given the opportunity to guest-edit an issue of Eye to the Telescope, the online literary magazine of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. As editor I chose the theme “Ghosts”, which I thought was fitting for the Halloween season and reflective of my lifelong love of the subject:

From an early age, I have been consumed with the question of what happens after we die; perhaps not the most psychologically healthy preoccupation for a little girl, but certainly a fruitful one for a budding speculative writer. In literature, as in real life, I am fascinated with ghosts—specters, hauntings, poltergeists, bean-sidhe, È Guǐ,—stories of spirit sightings that suggest our souls go on about their business even after our bodies go into ground. [From “Editor’s Intro, Eye to the Telescope #22]

The response to this issue was amazing. The SFPA received a record number of submissions. The overall quality was humbling; it was a challenge and an honor to curate the “Ghosts” issue in a way that I feel truly represents the breadth and vision of modern speculative poetry.

ETTT#22, “Ghosts” went “live” on October 15, 2016, with a super-sized issue of twenty-seven poets, including veteran speculative writers and promising new voices in the field.

To celebrate the “Ghosts” issue launch, I thought I would take us into Halloween by featuring various poems from the issue. You can read the full text over on the ETTT website (and I hope you will!). Here, I’d like to look at highlights of the 27 “ghost” poems from an editor’s perspective, including what won me over about each and why I feel these poems took the tropes of ghosts and ghost stories in new, unexpected directions.

Tulpa by L.W. Salinas

If ghosts are the memory of a person bound to a place,
then what are words bound to paper but another form of ghost?

…With each word we resurrect the dead, allowing them inside.

A convenient definition of “Tulpa” refers to “a being or object created through sheer spiritual or mental discipline”. While the idea has roots in early Buddhist teachings, it has parallels in many mystical traditions (modern occultists posit that magic is possible because thought has form; add intent to form and you get power). The concept of “tulpa” has even found its way into modern internet culture.

This was one of the later poems I received, after ETTT #22 was already taking form in my imagination, and in my computer’s notes. So it was late to the party and at a disadvantage due its density of language (each issue of ETTT comes with a budget, and poems are paid per word). It’s also one of the less genre-y poems in the batch. While the literary ghosts that haunt “Tulpa” may also be literal, the poet really just posits a possibility: what if the written word is a kind of ghost — an afterlife in a sense, by which we can go on to haunt the living — the readers — even after our bodies are long gone?

Hypothetical, but creepy, if you think about it. And let us not forget that “what if” is the true heart of speculative literature. Everything sci-fi and fantasy and undefinable or not-yet-defined — heck, even science itself — begins with the question.

Also the idea of a poem about words as ghosts as the introduction to a collection of ghost poems was too deliciously meta to pass up. Once I realized how perfect “Tulpa” was as a gateway to the ideas in this issue, it’s fate was (forgive me) writ in stone.

Plus, “Tulpa” offers us poetry that is simply beautiful in its own right:

Memories sheltered and protected between leather covers like the last thylacine at a zoo, precious and endangered. Or like the last polio virus, terrifying in scope. Ghosts that weep, rage, laugh, and ponder in their thin paper hallways and always find their way back to haunt the living who seek them.

L. W. Salinas is a podcaster, a voice actress, a writer, and a crafter from Houston, Texas. Her fiction has previously been published in the collection Ten Days of Madness. This is her first poetry publication. She can be found at lawofalltrades.wordpress.com

Hart Island by Holly Lyn Walrath

There are too many ghosts here. The ferry brings more each day.
Its prow breaks the brown water, the cranes lifting our shells over masts,
into mass graves. Or else the current brings us more, sucking boats into its maw
and cracking them in its teeth like sunflower seeds.

If “Tulpa” was a treasure in the last wave of submissions, “Hart Island” was the very first poem to win my heart. I knew I had to have it from the first read, even before I’d done my due googling and learned that the titular island is a real place with a fascinating and appalling history.

Walrath’s descriptive prowess is the kind that makes my chest hurt. I couldn’t tear my eyes away, and when the poem finally dropped me off a cliff with that abrupt and mysterious final stanza, I went back and read it another few dozen times, and kept reading it until I could send the poet an official “yes”.

What I wanted most for the “Ghosts” issue of Eye to the Telescope were poems of “the unexpected, the unmeasured… poems that belie the limits of life and afterlife and what we think a ghost story should be”. With its nightmare vision of souls heaped and shoveled like so much refuse, “served up like a feast for the island’s heart”, “Hart Island” delivered the unexpected in spades, while still evoking the sense of place and tragedy that all good hauntings require.

I particularly like the element of the unexplained in this poem: the unknown “He” at the end, and the sense that there are stories within stories, here; archeological layers of humanity to lay bare, and haunted places within this haunted place, where even the ghosts dare not go.

Holly Lyn Walrath’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Abyss & Apex, Liminality and Kaleidotrope, among others. She lives in Seabrook, Texas, just five minutes from NASA. She wrangles writers as a freelance editor and volunteers as the associate director of Writespace, a nonprofit literary center in Houston, Texas. Find her online @hollylynwalrath or hlwalrath.com

Mysticeti by Akua Lezli Hope

When Inuits pray to whale
their prayer boat captain lifts his arms
sings aloud that all be kept from harm
that this vessel of life will surrender
relinquish its one self for their many
and that all whale is and carries
transforms…

When I began to select poems for the “Ghosts” issue, I found that many presented themselves to me as couples; distinct but complimentary spins on similar genres, ideas or themes. While “Mysticeti” and “Hart Island” are very different poems, they both struck me with their imaginative and epic depictions of afterlife. They are also both concerned with the fate of ghostly bodies, positing unusual landscapes in which the dead take up space, however supernaturally redefined — and they both raise questions of personal autonomy vested — or taken — from the “surviving” soul.

“Mysticeti” (which refers to a species of whale, often called “great whales”) was possibly the most unusual ghost story I came across. In this poem, the spirits of drowned people cast from slave ships are sustained, woven to an ancient whale, protecting her from the same type of profit-minded greed that stole their earthly lives. Perhaps the whale carried old Inuit prayers on her body, enabling her to catch up the souls of the dying as if with a net. Or, perhaps there was some mystical symbiosis at work, born from kindred experience among victims, among the hunted. Either way,”Mysticeti” offers us the hauntingly beautiful image of the ghost-wreathed whale, living out her life untouched, her autonomy preserved.

As one of the trio of poems to usher in the “Ghosts” issue, “Mysticeti” informs the reader that we are heading into uncharted waters.

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass and metal to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, wearables, sculpture, adornments and peace whenever possible. Her awards include two Artists Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Ragdale U.S.-Africa Fellowship, a Hurston-Wright scholarship, and a Creative Writing Fellowship from The National Endowment for The Arts. Her first collection, EMBOUCHURE, Poems on Jazz and Other Musics, won the Writer’s Digest book award for poetry. Her manuscript Them Gone, awarded Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize, will be published in 2016. She won the 2015 SFPA short poem prize. A paraplegic, she’s developing a paratransit nonprofit so that she and others may get around in her small town.

July, 2016

Eye to the Telescope Issue #22

“Ghosts”

edited by Shannon Connor Winward

As guest editor for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s online magazine, Eye to the Telescope, I chose a theme close to my heart (and fitting for the month of October).

For this issue I am looking for more than thumps in the attic and pretty dead girls on a moonlit road. I want the unexpected, the unmeasured—I want poems that belie the limits of life and afterlife and what we think a ghost story should be. Give me phantoms and poltergeists, yes, bean-sidhe and È Guǐ, pathos or parody, space ship specters or transmigrating alien souls—I want any and all of it, as long the poem has meat on its bones.

No restrictions on genre or form (though “speculative” is a must). Graphic violence or gore will be a hard sell. More than anything, I want to be moved.

Full guidelines here. Be sure to check out the current and back issues or visit SFPoetry.com to get a feel for what we mean by “speculative”.

Scott Whitaker Reviews
Shannon Connor Winward’s
Undoing Winter

(From VOLUME 9, ISSUE 6 // THE BROADKILL REVIEW – November 2015)

Shannon Connor Winward’s Undoing Winter, from Finishing Line Press, explores the relationship between self, myth and history. And for Winward, the past and the self are the wet earth, and the dead. Winward identifies the chthonic impulses that pull on our psyche. Family, the unexpected pain of loving children, these are but some of the themes lying in the winter setting of Winward’s chapbook. And it’s frightening. Thrilling, even.

Perhaps it’s the October chill in the air, and the pull of my imagination towards dark places, but Undoing Winter begins wielding dense and eloquent Dionysian tropes, the kind of musical mythic notes one hears in Plath, Sexton, and Bishop–on occasion, and in more contemporary artists such as Sharon Olds, Jean Feraca, and Beth Bachman. The iconic image of wet rich earth, so tied up with death and sex, is a primal murmur through Winter. And Winward becomes the throat for oracle, wearing a mask, and invoking poetic theatre.

The title poem “Undoing Winter” opens “I went into ground for you. I faced the guardians/of the gates of hell./I gave away my jeweled bracelets/ and marched naked to the cat-calls of the dead/ all to rescue your sorry ass/ and here you are,/ huddled on your mildewed throne/ speechless as a shrug.” The high and low registers of her voice contrast, a kind of static. The music of the “huddled…” and “speechless…” characterize the musical cadence of the poem.

Sonically, most of the chapbook echoes the title poem, they are poems of incantation, for lack of a better word. A catharsis, yes, but also transformative. The latter more important than the former. There is love and solace in her work, and levity, but for the most part Winter is an incantation, a purring engine of anger, desire, and loss.

“I Visit Your Heart” a speculative gem, hums with the kind of glamor a beautiful predator purrs from a long graceful throat. “Your heart on ice is useless to you,/ so while you were sleeping/I had them cut it out, encase it in plastic/ and set it on a platform/ with a plaque that reads: choices.” The heart later becomes a “trophy valentine”, the physical remains of what had been a relationship, a “paperweight.”

What makes Undoing Winter dazzle is the sensuousness of its language. Poetry is, on some level, supposed to be sexy, dark, and dangerous. There are few character hooks in the book, and Winward plays her cards close to her chest, so we don’t have any idea if she is writing about real or imagined events or people. The emotional landscapes of the poems could as easily be from memory or from imagination. Winward does a poet’s’ job and makes the unpoetic dangers of life poetic and mystic, joining in the broad and great opus that is American letters.

Much thanks and kudos to fellow SFPA’er Diane Severson Mori over at Amazing Stories Magazine for her review of UNDOING WINTER! In addition to maintaining a regular column at Amazing Stories to highlight speculative poets and poetry, Diane also manages the not-insignificant task of rounding up the spec-poetry related publications and activities for Science Fiction Poetry Association members.

If you haven’t already, please do check out Diane’s thoughts on UNDOING WINTER, complete with recordings of three poems from the chapbook!

I’m busy getting ready for the DDOA Poet and Prose Writer’s Retreat this weekend (leaving my babies for four days! EEP!) but Diane’s post provides some food for thought that I’d like to revisit later [Watch this Space!!] To wit: while it’s true that none of the poetry in UNDOING WINTER is SciFi – indeed, i think I have all of one poem in my entire portfolio that I’d call straightup Science Fiction – I draw much of my inspiration from myth, folklore, and dreamscapes – all of which are snugly at home under the “Fantasy” category, which also counts as “Speculative Poetry”.

I think Speculative Poetry can be read in layers. The poems are metaphors, yes, but they also speak of their own realities. In my opinion, poems of ghosts, pagan gods, and slipstream are no more or less metaphorical than of any other genre – for what is SciFi, really, but the same, age old questions of the human condition, wrapped up in futuristic tropes?

The special promotional period for my poetry collection, UNDOING WINTER, ends this Friday, April 25th. To mark these final days, I thought I’d say a few words on one of the central themes of the book – katabasis, or “descent”.

From the Greek word for “down”, katabasis is a term beloved by psychologists and scholars (especially Jungian lovers like me). It refers to a downward journey – “a descent of some type, such as moving downhill, or the sinking of the winds or sun, a military retreat, or a trip to the underworld.” (See the Wikipedia article on katabasis here.)

The Easter holiday just passed celebrates a katabasis of sorts, and my favorite kind: the ancient story of rebirth, or return. Like Christ, many figures of myth undergo a journey into death, darkness, or despair, often in order to accomplish something superhuman – to resurrect a loved one, perhaps, or to bring a message of love and hope to mankind.

The titular poem in my collection, “Undoing Winter”, explores several other examples of katabasis. Perhaps the most obvious to fans of Classical myths is the story of Demeter, Goddess of Agriculture and mother of Persephone, a hapless maiden who was abducted in the bloom of her youth by Hades, Lord of the Underworld. As the story goes, Demeter in her grief defies the mighty Zeus, leaving the earth to languor in a perpetual winter so long as Persephone remains in her dark prison (spoiler alert: eventually Demeter wins her daughter back, though at a cost).

I faced the shining wrath of the sunon your behalfwhile you cried your soul away.I made excuses to the earth and skyand fed the peasants gravel.Give it time, I said. She is composting.Come again tomorrow.

Ever the fan of layers, I wrote UNDOING WINTER with other versions of the descent in mind as well – specifically Orpheus (the mythic Greek musician/poet) and Inanna (Sumerian Goddess of Awesomeness), both of whom braved underworld trials in order to bring back lost loves.

Arno Breker, Orpheus en Euridike (reliëf 1944)

It should be no surprise that such stories hold a constant place in the repertoire of faith– (and art, for that matter! How many modern fictional heroes can you think of who manage to fight their way back from certain death – and at what price?) As mortal beings, we face the loss of loved ones and of self at every turn. The hope that there is life beyond death is naturally something that occupies our collective psyches.

Yet stories of resurrection needn’t always be taken literally, nor do they only belong in the realm of heroes and gods.

In psychological terms, katabasis can be a metaphor for depression. This, too, is one of the central meanings of UNDOING WINTER, both the titular poem and the book as a whole. Though for me, the journey in and out of clinical depression happens to be a lifelong condition, many people (most, even?) have or will experience the long dark night of the soul.

This, I think, is another reason why stories of katabasis are so eternal. Life is hard – so hard, sometimes, that giving up or giving in seems preferable. Like the heroes of myth, it often takes great will or faith to overcome the lure of the dark. Sometimes returning to the light hurts like hell. As lovers of stories, we’re not just hoping to hear that death is not the end of us – we’re looking for reassurance that we have it in us to survive.

Ultimately, “Undoing Winter” is about self-rescue. The poem gives homage to – and takes liberty with – a powerful archetype found again and again in our collective archives. The collection, UNDOING WINTER, carries the idea even further. In this arrangement, I hope to bring the reader into some dark places… echoes of where I have been, and what I have endured… but there’s a reason for it. I promise. Because, for me, katabasis is not just about the journey down. It’s about coming back… by tooth and claw, if necessary… to find we are stronger… better… more ourselves than ever before.

UNDOING WINTER – coming June 2014

“Brigid’s Brambles” by Shannon Connor Winward

Also very exciting: My first poetry collection, UNDOING WINTER, has been contracted for publication by FINISHING LINE PRESS.

UNDOING WINTER is a mix of previously published poems and new work, in chapbook form. The collection deals with speculative and mythological themes as well as biographical (or semi-biographical) material.

The release date is tentatively scheduled for June 21st, 2014, with advance copies and pre-publication sales beginning in mid-March.

I will, of course, post updates as they become available. Watch this space!

The page also features work by SFPA members David Kopaska-Merkel, David L. Summers, Adele Gardner, Dennis M. Lane and F.J. Bergmann, and is edited by Liz Bennefeld. There may be more to come, as well – so go ahead. Show your appreciation for the Season, fly on over, and sit with us for a spell.